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Monday, December 29, 2014

Another year is ending and a new one beginning. It seems the perfect time to try our hand at writing a reverso.

The form, invented by Marilyn Singer, is described by the poet in this way.

A reverso is two poems in one. Read the first down and it says one thing. Read it back up, with changes just in punctuation and capitalization, and it's a different poem.

Here's an example Singer provides in her note about the form.

A cat
without
a chair:
incomplete

Incomplete:
a chair
without
a cat.

The coolest thing about these is that whether you are reading them forwards or backwards, they work! You can learn more about the reverso and the book that started it all by checking out this post at Seven Imp and this post at Writing and Ruminating.

So, what do you think? It seems an impossible task, but perhaps we could try writing some short poems similar to Marilyn's example. That, my friends, is the challenge. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Friday, December 12, 2014

If you know OWL MOON by Jane Yolen, you'll want to follow along with Owl Count 2014, which begins at midnight on December 14th. Heidi Stemple will be live tweeting (perhaps on this occasion it should be called hooting) @heidieys and reporting on the Facebook page. In honor of the count, I'm sharing this lovely poem.

Snowy Owl Near Ocean Shoresby Duane Niatum

A castaway blown south from the arctic tundra
sits on a stump in an abandoned farmer’s field.
Beyond the dunes cattails toss and bend as snappy
as the surf, rushing and crashing down the jetty.

His head a swivel of round glances,
his eyes a deeper yellow than the winter sun,
he wonders if the spot two hundred feet away
is a mouse on the crawl from mud hole
to deer-grass patch.

Monday, December 08, 2014

This weekend I was savoring Wallace Steven's wonderful poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. I began to think that looking at winter in this way might be an interesting thing to do. Now, you don't need to come up with 13 stanzas of your own. Perhaps we could write this as a modified renga, each contributing a verse or two.

Here is the stanza I'm starting with (I think).

I
Short days
long nights
the coldest of seasons
heralds the approaching light

However you want to approach it, the challenge this week is to write a few stanzas (or more!) about winter. I hope you'll join me. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Friday, December 05, 2014

Mother nature hasn't decided what the weather will be, with 70 degree days followed by 40 degree days. I'm enjoying advent and the slow approach of winter. Here's an old poem (late 16th to early 17th century) for the season.

Winter Nightsby Thomas Campion

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
And cups o'erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Anastasia Suen at Booktalking #kidlit. Happy poetry Friday friends!

Monday, December 01, 2014

Invented by Craig Tigerman, the editor for the online poetry journal SOL Magazine, the pleiades is a 7-line poem in which each line begins with same letter as the first letter in the one-word title. There are no rhyme or meter requirements for a pleiades, though some have suggested the lines be limited to six syllables.

Monday, November 24, 2014

An etheree is a poem of ten lines in which each line contains one more syllable than the last. Beginning with one syllable and ending with ten, this unrhymed form is named for its creator, 20th century American poet Etheree Taylor Armstrong.

Variant forms of the etheree include the reverse form, which begins with 10 syllables and ends with one. The double etheree is twenty lines, moving from one syllable to 10, and then from 10 back to one. (I suppose a double etheree could also move from 10 syllables to one, and then from one back to 10.)

Monday, November 10, 2014

Early this year we wrote poems that used the device anaphora. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences or clauses. Epiphora (or epistrophe) is the exact opposite, where this repetition occurs at the end of successive sentences or clauses.

Here are a few examples.

The Gettysburg Address
“… that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.“

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman
And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,
The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in
their place,
The palpable is in its place and the impalpable is in its place.)

From THE MERCHANT OF VENICE by William ShakespeareBassanio: Sweet Portia,
If you did know to whom I gave the ring,
If you did know for whom I gave the ring
And would conceive for what I gave the ring
And how unwillingly I left the ring,
When nought would be accepted but the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

Portia: If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honor to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring.

So, your challenge for the week is to write a poem that uses epiphora. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'all's neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell

The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller

If you have some time, here's the video of the song. (You can hear Vincent Price around the 6:30 mark.)

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Linda Baie at Teacher Dance. Happy poetry Friday friends! And Happy Halloween!

Monday, October 20, 2014

Over the last few weeks I have been scanning slides and revisiting old family photos. My uber-cute brother and sister are in the picture below! Don't you just love those Easter basket sunglasses?

While immersed in this project I've been reminded me of a story NPR ran a few years ago about a photo historian who found an archive of more than 14,000 photos taken by Charles W. Cushman. Cushman began using Kodachrome soon after it came out and used it to capture the world in ways it had never been seen before.

Our family slides are not great works of art, but they contain an awful lot of history. I'm amazed that this array of images has captured the evolution of the television, clothing, hairstyles, and cars. So, today I'm thinking about old kodachrome and photographs. I hope you'll join me this week in writing about them. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

I looked back over the last month and realized I have failed to post a stretch for several weeks now. Mea culpa, mea culpa. If you only knew about all the crazy things happening in my life! Please forgive my absence here. I've missed writing with you! I have been working on a project with the Poetry Princesses that I hope will be unveiled in a few short weeks.

That said, today I'm thinking about the lipogram. Alipogramis a piece of writing that avoids one or more letters of the alphabet. You can read more aboutlipogramsatA.Word.A.Day.

Here is an example of a lipogram. It comes from Gadsby, the 1939 story (more than 50,000 words!) by Ernest Vincent Wright that does not contain the letter E.

"Now, any author, from history's dawn, always had that most important aid to writing: an ability to call upon any word in his dictionary in building up his story. That is, our strict laws as to word construction did not block his path. But in my story that mighty obstruction will constantly stand in my path; for many an important, common word I cannot adopt, owing to its orthography."

Here's another form of lipogram favored by JonArno Lawson in A VOWELLER'S BESTIARY. This alphabet book is based on vowel combinations rather than initial letters. The lipograms in this book exclude certain vowels from each set and include each of the vowels in the word. Here's an example.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Welcome friends to Poetry Friday! I'm thrilled to be your host this week. Today I'm sharing a bit of Robert Frost. He's the one poet I revisit every fall. Whether it's Gathering Leaves, Nothing Gold Can Stay, or After Apple Picking, Frost puts me in the mood for my favorite season.

Octoberby Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.

Jama Rattigan shares excerpts from the rhyming picture book BAKING DAY AT GRANDMA'S by Anika and Christopher Denise and a recipe for chocolate cake! Yum! (Notice which part of the Friday Feast description I've chosen as the link!)

Diane Mayr has lots of goodies today. At Random Noodling she shares some Edgar Allan Poe. At Kurious Kitty she shares a bit of Billy Collins.

Friday, September 19, 2014

I've frequented some library sales and second hand bookstores recently and have added some lovely titles to my poetry collection. Today I'm sharing two poems from the book Sweet Corn: Poems by James Stevenson.

Screen Door

When fog blurs the morning,
Porches glisten, shingles drip.
Droplets gather on the green screen door.
"Look," they say to one another.
"Look how dry it is inside."

Ladder

The ladder leaning against the barn
Is like the man who used to use it:
Strong at the beginning,
Okay in the middle,
A few rungs missing at the end.

Monday, September 08, 2014

I'm always inspired and a bit in awe when I read a poem that uses the same word in multiple ways. I often wish I were this clever. However, I've begun to think that like many things, getting better is a matter of practice.

Polysemantic words are words that have multiple, diverse meanings. I often share these words in math and science to highlight just how confusing content vocabulary can be for students. Think about the word scale. Scale can be:

an instrument used to measure weight or mass

the outer covering on a reptile or fish

a proportion between two sets of dimensions

a series of musical tones in ascending or descending order

the act of climbing

I'm sure you can think of many words that have multiple meanings. Your challenge this week is to pick a polysemantic word and use it in multiple ways in a poem of any form. I hope you will join me. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Yesterday I read a post by Donalyn Miller entitled No More Language Arts and Crafts. It struck a chord with me as I thought about how we try to motivate kids to read, and all the ways we get it wrong.

First, let me respond to this by telling you about a little rant I usually end up making during the first weeks of the semester. It generally occurs when I teach students how to write lesson plans and we get to the section labeled homework. I've seen a lot of bad homework over the years, as a parent and a teacher educator reading lesson plans. It seems that no one really thinks about why we give homework. What purpose does it serve? How does it advance what you're doing in the classroom? Is it absolutely necessary? Homework should be given because it is beneficial to student learning, and not because it's "school policy."

There has been a lot of research done on the effects of homework. One of the best introductions to this is the Educational Leadership piece The Case For and Against Homework.

I do tell my students (future teachers) that I think a worksheet with 25 problems is a terrible idea for math homework. I would rather see students solve one good problem and explain how they did it than use rote skills to complete a series of problems that doesn't do much to engage their brains. Also, too many teachers assign homework as practice long before students are ready to tackle the problems on their own.

Ultimately, my suggestion for elementary school homework is "Read, play, and puzzle."

Read - Reading for homework is a no-brainer, and EVERYTHING and ANYTHING should count. How can we ever hope to build stamina if kids don't sit and read? Kids should be read to and read on their own. Please don't tell me that wordless picture books and graphic novels don't count. You won't convince me that reading David Wiesner's wordless book Flotsam is any less challenging or engaging than a "traditional" picture book with words. Or that the graphic novel The Great American Dust Bowl by Don Brown isn't a masterpiece of history and science, weaving together sourced facts in an accurate historical narrative.

Play - Kids weren't meant to sit in a chair all day long. They need time to run, play, imagine, create, and do all kinds of things the curriculum doesn't allow them to do. When kids get home from school the first order of business shouldn't be homework. They should be allowed to run and play outside, ride a bike, walk the dog, catch frogs (if they do that sort of thing), climb trees, and more. They should build with LEGO and GoldiBlox, draw pictures, build train track, topple dominoes, play board games, and more. Play is just as important as structured learning, and kids don't get enough of it today.

Puzzle - When was the last time you sat down to solve a puzzle and did it for fun? I do this all the time. Sudoku, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, logic problems, tangrams ... I could go on. Puzzles are good for the brain. They develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. They teach kids to persevere, guess and check, collaborate with others, and try a whole host of new strategies. Can you think of a better training ground for mathematical thinking than puzzling? Now imagine if your teacher encouraged you to do this for homework.

Let me bring this back to reading and how we document what kids do. When I taught middle school science I had a large classroom library. Most of the books were nonfiction of the Eyewitness variety, though I had a lot of books by Patricia Lauber and Seymour Simon. Every Friday one class of kids went home with a book from my library. EVERY KID. There were no reading logs, no book report forms, no AR tests. The books came back on Thursday and each child gave a quick book talk. These were informal. We sat in a circle, they held up their books, gave the title and author, and then gave a general overview and one cool thing they learned. Each student was given one minute. The hardest part of the assignment? Cutting kids off at the one-minute mark so everyone had a chance to speak. I only lost two books in the three years I did this. Kids didn't forget to bring them back. They often wanted to keep books longer than the week. And you know what? THEY WANTED TO READ. The bonus for me was that they were learning a lot of science on their own and from their peers. During the week they had their books there were lots of side conversations about what they were reading.

Isn't this what we want? Kids excited about reading and what they are learning? Yes, I think so.

I've been working on a series of "homework" bags to share with my classes. The math bags contain a book and a game (with all the materials and directions to play). Homework is reading and play. The beauty is that the play is mathematically oriented, so kids are practicing and reinforcing basic skills. The science bags contain a pair of linked books, usually a nonfiction or poetry title with a picture book. For example, one bag pairs a copy of the book An Island Grows by Lola Schaefer with the book Volcano Rising by Elizabeth Rusch. Where I can include cheap materials and activity ideas, I may just do that.

Ultimately, I don't want reading or homework to be a chore. I want kids to be engaged and thinking. I don't believe homework should be given out per some classroom policy, but should be thoughtfully devised and intentionally planned. If we do this, it will make a difference.

Monday, September 01, 2014

Sorry I missed you last week, but with the start of the semester here, things got a bit crazy.

Yesterday during morning mass and the Prayers of the Faithful we prayed for those who labor and wish to do so. I thought a lot about that over the course of the day and realized how very lucky I am to not only be employed, but to be engaged in work that (for the most part!) love to do.

So, this is not very inspired on this day, but I want to write about work and labors of love. I hope you will join me. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday, August 18, 2014

This weekend I watched my niece get married. I'm a bit shocked that time has passed so quickly and that we've all aged (some more gracefully than others). There were lots of smiles this weekend, a great deal of happiness, and a whole lot of joy.

What makes you happy or joyful? Let's write about that this week. I hope you will join me. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday, August 11, 2014

I had planned to write to form again this week, but I found myself thinking quite a lot of my mother this weekend, and nearly every memory was of her in the kitchen.

As a child I hated chores in the kitchen, particularly drying the dishes, but these are some of the times with my mom I remember most fondly. She always washed. I dried and put dishes away. I can still see her the ceramic elephant on the windowsill, trunk raised and holding her rings while she plunged her hands into very hot soapy water to scrub the pots and pans. That elephant sits on my kitchen windowsill now.

Perhaps my fondest memory of my mom standing with her back against the oven, waiting for it to warm her in the cold of winter. I wasn't tall enough to reap such benefits, but can remember putting my hand on her back and feeling just how toasty she'd gotten.

So, your challenge for this week is to write a poem set in the kitchen. I hope you will join me. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Back in 2011 we wrote poems in the form of macaronic verse. It's been a long time, so this seems like a good time to revisit the form. The Handbook of Poetic Forms defines macaronic verse in this fashion.

Macaronic verse is a peculiar, rare and often comic form of poetry that sometimes borders on nonsense. It is a mixture of two (or more) languages in a poem, in which the poet usually subjects one language to the grammatical laws of another to make people laugh.

The definition is a poem in a mixture of two languages, one of them preferably Latin. Usually the mixture of languages is a bit absurd. The word of one language may be terminated with common endings in the other.

So, your challenge for this week is to write a poem that uses more than one language. I hope you will join me this week in writing macaronic verse. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday, July 21, 2014

In my Poetry Friday post I shared a poem from the book DOGS AND DRAGONS, TREES AND DREAMS by Karla Kuskin.

Published in 1980, Kuskin wrote:

An Introduction Children May Feel Free To Ignore

The double purpose of this introduction is to bring together poems I wrote for children between 1958 and 1975 and to discuss the process of introducing poetry to children.

Throughout the book the poems are prefaced with insights into the nature of reading, writing, and appreciating poetry. Here's an example.

As you read a poem aloud listen to the sounds of the words. They have infinite variety. There are short, brittle sounds, soft rolling sounds, stuttering sounds and the sibilance of many s's, long liquid sounds flowing with o's. In some poems there is not so much sense as sound.

Near the end of the book Kuskin shares a number of mask or persona poems. The preface to this collection reads:

The following five poems do not have titles. As you read each poem you will figure out what it is describing. Each one tells how it would feel to be something other than yourself.

I've read a lot of descriptions of mask poems. I think I like this one best. Here's one of the poems she shared.

If you,
Like me,
Were made of fur
And sun warmed you,
Like me,
You'd purr.

You can read more about persona poems (and teaching them) at the Poetry Foundation.

I hope you will join me this week in writing a mask/persona poem. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Last week I left Virginia and made the long road trip to NY. Ten+ hours in a car is not my idea of fun. However, getting home is always lovely. I had a nice visit with my mother, who happens to be celebrating her 85th birthday today, and my brother and his family. I drove home earlier this week in what at times were torrential downpours.

My trips to western NY always include a trip to Lake Ontario to walk on the pier. I take my mother with me and push her in her wheelchair. These walks are quite nostalgic, as she tells me all about growing up in the town of Summerville on the lake.

I'll be heading back in a month for my niece's wedding, which means I probably won't see the ocean this summer unless I take time off to make a day trip. Just like my visits to the lake, I find so much peace and comfort in the water.

Today I'm sharing a poem from a book I found last week in a library discard pile. That book is DOGS AND DRAGONS, TREES AND DREAMS by Karla Kuskin.

Sitting in the Sand
by Karla Kuskin

Sitting in the sand and the sea comes up
So you put your hands together
And you use them like a cup
And you dip them in the water
With a scooping kind of motion
And before the sea goes out again
You have a sip of ocean.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference. Happy poetry Friday friends.

Monday, July 07, 2014

I love the poems that were shared as part of last week's stretch to write about America. I understand the sentiments of both pride and disappointment. What came out in some of the comments and conversations I had afterwards is that even though we are discouraged, we have not lost hope.

A few years back when I traveled to China, I decided to get a tattoo to commemorate my trip. I knew exactly what I wanted. This is my tattoo.

Traditionally, Chinese characters were read from top to bottom and right to left. However, in modern times the western approach to reading from left to right and top to bottom is often used. Read in this fashion, the characters represent faith, hope, and love. Some days it's particularly hard to keep the faith and have hope. Whenever I forget this I need only look in the mirror, my tattoo a gentle reminder to press on.

This seems like the moment to write about faith, hope, or both. I do hope you will join me this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday, June 30, 2014

Last week my Thursday class focused on using primary sources, interpreting documents and analyzing art and photographs. We also looked at the book THE ART OF FREEDOM: HOW ARTISTS SEE AMERICA, by Bob Raczka. Using very simple text and art from the likes of Georgia O'Keefe, Thomas Hart Benton, John Trumbull, Stuart Davis, and more, Raczka provides an introduction to the things that make us American. In pictures and words America is depicted as hard work, jazz, baseball, freedom, and more.

This book got me thinking about the stretch this week. Since the 4th of July is Friday, this seems like a perfect time to write about what America is. I hope you will join me in writing about America this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Friday, June 27, 2014

At the end of each week I head to church to practice the music I'll be singing on the weekend. I could probably lead most of these songs in my sleep, but I feel better about croaking out songs at 8:30 on Sunday morning when I've had a bit of rehearsal.

This time of year my favorite thing about visiting the church is Father George's garden. Right now it is filled with gorgeous wildflowers. Seeing them today reminded me of this poem.

Wildflowersby Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page
of them, all beginning with the letter b.
Guidebooks preserve our knowledge
of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Over the weekend I was reading excerpts from the essays of Alfred Brendel on music and came across a notion that has stuck with me.

"The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'."

It seems so obvious and simple really, but silence is so important. The silence in music often conveys as much as the notes. It is in the silence that I do my best thinking, best writing, and best observing. I also can't help but think this is important to convey in the classroom as I teach kids how to speak with others and to actively listen.

So, silence seems like a good topic for writing this week. I hope you will join me in writing about quiet this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Late again, I am. I spent the day yesterday cleaning house with my son. It's an end of the school year tradition. He goes through his books, "toys" (he's 13 now, so apparently I can't call them toys any longer) and other materials he's collected over the course of the year and offers them up for donation. A large box of books is going to teacher friends, the rest have gone to Freecycle.

I've done a lot of cleaning out over the last year, first as we downsized my mother to a 190 square foot room in a nursing home, and just recently as we've downsized my in-laws from a 3000+ square foot home to a retirement cottage of just over 1400 square feet. All this downsizing has made me realize how much "stuff" I have that I don't need. As hard as it is to let go of things, this "stuff" does not make my life. There is much I can and will gladly give away, but the collections? Now this is where I have difficulty.

I have a hefty stamp collection, but I have taken it to my office and now use it in my teaching.

I have been collecting teapots (individual sizes) since my college days. I use one or two, but the rest sit on a shelf where I love to look at them.

I have a large collection of of pottery I use in the kitchen. Most of these dishes only see the light of day a few times a year, but again, I have glass-front cabinets and love to see them.

My largest collection of items is books, and books I just can't bear to part with.

Do you have a collection? If it could talk, what would it say? What would you say about it? Let's write about collections this week. I hope you will join us. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Monday, June 09, 2014

Back in April, Travis over at 100 Scope Notes sponsored a gallery of book spine poems. He's been doing this since 2010, so if you check out this year's gallery, you can also explore poems from other years. Book spine poems are the equivalent of visual centos. You take someone else's words and arrange them to make something new.

This morning while re-shelving books from last week's classes, a few titles jumped out at me. I suppose you could say my books goaded me into the stretch this week. Here are my poems.

Black stars in a white night sky

light and shadow

a million dots

tap dancing on the roof

where I live

Outside your window

a whiff of pine, a hint of skunk

one leaf rides the wind.

In November,

forest has a song

With the exception of A MILLION DOTS, all of these are poetry books.

I hope you'll join me in perusing your shelves and creating a book spine poem this week. I don't think you can leave a photo in the comments, so please share a link to your poem.

Tuesday, June 03, 2014

In introducing my Poetry Friday post on Sorrow, Diane Mayr wrote "Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is back. She's been having a difficult month and so, she's posting a poem called "Sorrow." Since a shared sorrow is a sorrow halved, then by the end of the day, her readers should have her back on the joy track."

Many of you dropped by to offer offer words of wisdom, virtual hugs, and kind thoughts.

Diane wrote "Embrace the sadness for without it, you can't appreciate the happy times."

It appears now that there is only one
age and it knows
nothing of age as the flying birds know
nothing of the air they are flying through
or of the day that bears them up
through themselves
and I am a child before there are words
arms are holding me up in a shadow
voices murmur in a shadow
as I watch one patch of sunlight moving
across the green carpet
in a building
gone long ago and all the voices
silent and each word they said in that time
silent now
while I go on seeing that patch of sunlight

Mary Lee reminded me why I love Poetry Friday and the Kidlitosphere so much when she wrote "I am thankful to be part of a community where you could lay it before us (along with a poem) and allow us to gather round you, hold you up, help you move on."

Margaret Simon wrote "Sorrow is like a ceaseless rain, but when it is through, the sun shines and the flowers bloom and we see life anew. That is my hope for you."

Laura wrote "We all have seasons of loss—times of year when anniversaries and birthdays of those we've lost make us sad. Millay's poem captures that slowed-down feeling that comes with grief. Sending you a virtual hug.

There were many more lovely messages shared through e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter. Your support has broken through the clouds and allowed the sun to shine through. I can't thank you enough for that. The next time I need some cheering up, I will return to this post to soak up the kindness.

I love the notion of writing about the shape of things. What do you see in the number 6? Or the letter Y? What kind of ideogramatic poem can from the word S-P-R-I-N-G? (Ideogramatic? Yeah, I just made that up!)

Visit Joyce Sidman's site to see how she used the words in her name to write an ideogram poem. Now it's your turn to write an ideogram poem. Won't you join us? Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments.

Friday, May 30, 2014

I've been away for a few weeks, not a surprising turn at the end of the semester. When I come down from the high of April and posting on poetry every day, I am always faced with finals, graduation, and wrapping up the academic year.

However, it's not just the end of school that puts me in a gray place each May. On May 5th I remember my father on his birthday, and again on May 7th, the anniversary of his death. This year marked 5 years without him. On May 10th I observed what would have been my parent's 62nd wedding anniversary. All of these dates are closely followed by graduation, an event celebrated here at UR each year on Mother's day.

This year was especially difficult, as the university community was shocked and saddened by the tragic death of two members of the women's basketball staff in a terrible accident. I knew both of these women. The first was Ginny Doyle. I looked forward to seeing her every spring, as she brought me recruits interested in education. In nearly 14 years working together she never called me Tricia, even though I insisted. She always called me Dr. Stohr. So, I took to calling her Coach Doyle, never Ginny. Over the years she introduced me to a number of remarkable young scholar athletes with a passion for teaching, many of them becoming my students. The second was Natalie Lewis. Natalie was a student of mine, but more than that, she was a connection to home. When I first taught Natalie we made that connection that only folks from Buffalo can make. We talked about food, things we missed, and locations we both knew and loved. I learned quickly that Natalie grew up just a block from the tiny apartment my husband lived in, and the one we shared for a few short months after being wed. Even after her classes with me were complete, she stopped by to visit. I went to see her swim. She came by during student teaching to raid my bookshelves and borrow materials. When she took the job at UR, I would often stop by to say hello on my walk to work. She had a big heart, an old soul, and so much joy that you couldn't help but smile when you saw her.

So, I've been silent for a few weeks, trying to push past the gray and back into the sunshine. It would be so much easier if Mother Nature would cooperate. It was 95 here on Wednesday and 65 on Thursday. Many of the days have been overcast.

In light of the recent death of Maya Angelou, I've been reading her poems, but I imagine lots of folks are sharing her work today. Instead, I'm allowing myself just one last wallow before I pick myself up and dust myself off.

Sorrowby Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, —
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.

I do hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Diane at Random Noodling. Happy poetry Friday friends.

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

In 2008 the state of Virginia added Cesar Chavez to the standards for history and social science in third grade. Under the heading of civics instruction students learn about the importance of the basic principles of democracy and identify the contributions of selected individuals. Chavez was added to a list that already included George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr.. As this list is meant to expose children to people who worked to defend the basic principles that form the foundation of our government, I was thrilled when he was added.

If you don't know much about Chavez, here's a quick video introduction.

Today's pairing offers a glimpse into the life and work of Cesar Chavez.

Poetry Book

César: ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes We Can, written by Carmen Bernier-Grand and illustrated by David Diaz, is a biography written in a series of 19 free verse poems. It is one of the most comprehensive and moving biographies of the man I have ever read. What is different about this work is that it does not shy away from the difficulties and injustices he faced in his life. Instead, his life story is told head on, shining a spotlight on the good and bad times. It begins not with his birth, but a poem that wonders at what and who he would become. From here the poems describe his name, his dad, his mom, happy moments of childhood, the Depression, the constant moving, working the fields, schooling, losing the family ranch, the farm workers' struggles, organizing the workers, his death, and much more.

Here is the poem that opens the book.

Who Could Tell?

¡Hijole!
Who could tell?

Who could tell
that Cesario Estrada Chavez,
the shy American
wearing a checkered shirt,
walking with a can to ease his back
from the burden of the fields,
could organize so many people
to march for La Causa, The Cause?

Who could tell
that he with a soft pan dulce voice,
hair the color of mesquite,
and downcast, Aztec eyes,
would have the courage to speak up
for the campesinosto get better pay,
better housing,
better health?

¡Hijole!
Who could tell?

Here is one of my favorite poems from the book.

Crooked Lines

"God has written in exceedingly
crooked lines."

What made César follow
Father McDonnell
from camp to camp
and Mass to Mass?

What made Father McDonnell
give César the teachings and prayers
of Saint Francis of Assisi:
"Lord, make me an instrument
of your peace"?

Why did a book about Saint Francis
mention Mahatma Gandhi,
a man of peace who won many battles
against injustices in India?

Why did César talk
to Father McDonnell
about his passion for peaceful change
and the leadership hidden deep
inside him?

What made Father McDonnell
send Fred Ross, from the
Community Service Organization,
to see César?

The back matter is extensive and includes a section of notes, a glossary of Spanish terms used in the poems, a short synopsis of Chávez's life, a brief chronology, the author's sources, and a collection of Chávez's quotes. On the back jacket of the book readers will find Chavez's core values. They were: service to others, sacrifice, a preference to help the most needy, determination, nonviolence, acceptance of all people, respect for life and environment, community, knowledge, and innovation.

Nonfiction Picture Book

Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, written by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Yuyi Morales, is a biography of Chavez that focuses on the impact of his early years, his work in the fields and organizing the workers, and efforts to sign the first contract for farmworkers. Krull shares both the highs and lows of his life, painting him as a kind and patient man who worked tirelessly on behalf of others. Here is an excerpt from his youth.

Cesar swallowed his bitter homesickness and worked alongside his family. He was small and not very strong, but still a fierce worker. Nearly every crop caused torment. Yanking out beets broke the skin between his thumb and index finger. Grapevines sprayed with bug-killing chemicals made his eyes sting and his lungs wheeze. Lettuce had to the be the worst. Thinning lettuce all day with a short-handled hoe would make hot spasms shoot through his back. Farm chores on someone else's farm instead of his own felt like a form of slavery.

As Cesar grew older and began to work on behalf of the farmworkers, he organized them and supported a nonviolent approach. Here is another excerpt.

In a fight for justice, he told everyone, truth was a better weapon than violence. "Nonviolence," he said, "takes more guts." It meant using imagination to find ways to overcome powerlessness.

More and more people listened.

One night, 150 people poured into an old abandoned theater in Fresno. At this first meeting of the National Farm Workers Association, Cesar unveiled its flag—a bold black eagle, the sacred bird of the Aztec Indians.

While the book ends with the signing of the first contract for farm workers, there was still much work to be done. Krull shares some of the highlights of Chavez's continued work in an Author's Note.

The Art

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the art in these two books. Both of these illustrators, David Diaz and Yuyi Morales, have earned medals and been honored by the The Pura Belpré Award. This award is "presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth." HARVESTING HOPE was an honor book for illustration in 2004, while CÉSAR: ¡SÍ, SE PUEDE! YES WE CAN was an honor book for illustration in 2006. While different in style, they are both gorgeous accompaniments to the stories of Chavez.

Perfect Together
There are a number of other good biographies written for children about Chavez. These two are my favorites, in part because the illustrations are so highly reflective of the culture they represent. I also think the two pair nicely in that a number of the poems match times in the life of Chavez highlighted by Krull.

If you read the title of this exercise aloud, you will hear a quadruple rhyme. But if you examine the words themselves, you will notice that there is something special about this rhyme scheme. The sound shun is contained in ocean, the sounds of both shun and ocean in motion, and shun, ocean and motion can all be folded into emotion. Such a rhyme scheme, which incidentally was favored by the seventeenth-century poet George Herbert, is called diminishing rhyme because the rhyme words get smaller as you move from emotion to shun. But I prefer the term nesting rhymes because the words nest one inside the other like Russian wooden dolls.

Here is an example of this form from the George Herbert poem "Paradise".

I bless Thee, Lord, because I grow
Among the trees, which in a row
To Thee both fruit and order ow

Thursday, May 01, 2014

It's hard to believe that National Poetry Month is over. Like others who bemoan the fact that we trot out certain subjects and peoples for monthly celebrations instead of making them part of the fabric of our lives and teaching throughout the year, I have mixed feelings about a month devoted to poetry. While I am appreciative that it exists and that it generally compels teachers and others to pay attention, I want more for poetry. More reading, more writing, more consideration beyond the 30 days in April. I hope that through my poetry pairings teachers will find poetry creeping into the classroom all year round.

Here's a recap of the month with links to the topics presented and a few reflections thrown in.

Dinosaurs - In many states dinosaurs are not part of the elementary curriculum. I probably should have mentioned that in my post. However, in the last revision of our state standards, a standard was added to second grade that read "fossils provide information about living systems that were on Earth years ago." That works for me!

Birds - I could have easily created two posts (or more!) featuring birds. Next time around I'll be sure to include the books BEAKS! by Sneed Collard III and FEATHERS: NOT JUST FOR FLYING by Melissa Stewart.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Alas, it is the 30th of April and National Poetry Month is coming to a close. I've enjoyed pulling books from my shelves and sharing them with you. Originally my intent was to tackle a subject area each week, but when I realized that I had more science than I knew what to do with, I decided to stick with a theme that is near and dear to my heart.

Today I'm going to share the Poetry Friday Anthology for Science and some final ideas about authors and books every teacher should have in his/her classroom, or should at least know about. If you haven't made friends with your school or local children's librarian, please do! Librarians are invaluable resources in helping you find good books for instruction.

Poetry Book

The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science, compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, is a collection of 218 poems by 78 different poets. In the acknowledgements (p. 303) the authors have this to say about science and poetry.

... For generations, poets have been observing nature, exploring the physical world, and asking questions about the universe.

It shouldn't be surprising that poetry has a lot to offer the sciences. In fact, astrophysicist Adam Frank revealed, "Poems and poetry are, for me, a deep form of knowing, just like science . . . each, in its way, is a way to understand the world." Poets and scientists both seek to observe, explain, and understand the world around them.

You'll find 36 weeks of poems for every grade from K-5. That's means there are 216 grade level poems, bookended by opening and closing poems for everyone. Every grade level poem is accompanied by a Take 5! box containing teaching tips and ideas. Here's an example.

Imagine Smallby Eileen Spinelli

Imagine something very small:
a rubber duck, a ping-pong ball.

Imagine something smaller yet:
a pebble or a violet.

Go smaller now: a silver bead,
a baby's tooth, a pumpkin seed.

Keep going—
freckle, flea, or gnat,
a speck of dander from the cate.
Imagine that.

And then imagine this—so cool!—
a teeny-tiny molecule.
So teeny-tiny you and I
can't see it with the naked eye.

To think of it gives me a chill.
But there is something smaller still:
the atom!

Billions fit in a fleck of foam
or on the dot at the end of this poem.

Before sharing this poem, invite students to close their eyes and imagine the smallest thing they can think of. Then read this poem aloud, pausing before each stanza for added effect.

In addition to a wealth of poems and teaching tips, you'll also find information on reading poetry aloud, building your own poetry library, children's poetry websites and blogs, websites to support science learning, a science glossary, and much more. If you haven't used poetry in teaching science before now, this is the book to get you started.

Authors and Series You Should Know

When I began teaching science in the laste 80s, my classroom library was filled with books by Patricia Lauber, Seymour Simon and Franklyn Branley. The Magic School Bus series had just been born, Eyewitness books were popping up all over, Vicki Cobb was writing fun and engaging hands-on activity books for kids, and the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out Science series was regularly adding new titles.

We are fortunate today that there are MANY terrific authors and illustrators/photographers of incredible nonfiction science books for kids. I've had the pleasure of sharing many with you over the course of this month. Here are the authors I recommend to my preservice teachers, and whose books I drag with me into the elementary classrooms that are kind enough to have me.

I wish I had time to write some words about each of these talented folks, but instead I've linked to their web sites where possible. Not wanting to show any favoritism, I've listed them alphabetically.

If I've missed a terrific author or series, please let me know so I can add them to the list.

I hope you've enjoyed exploring science and poetry with me this month. My goal is to post once a week about some other perfect pairing of poetry and nonfiction picture books. For now, however, I take my leave to grade exams and final projects as I wrap up my 20th year at the University. Thanks to everyone who's stopped by to visit this month. I've enjoyed having you.

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Blogs I Read

Below you will find links to some of the many blogs I enjoy reading. They are broken down into categories and include only the FIVE MOST RECENT POSTS. You will find blogs written by teachers, librarians, homeschoolers, parents, authors, illustrators and many other folks who share a love for children's literature. Enjoy!